Clackmannanshire Council Museum & Heritage Service

The collection is stored in the former Liberal Club, Mar Street, Alloa, a fine building of 1904. The eclectic collection includes items of archaeological, social and industrial history relating to Clackmannanshire, including W & J A Bailey’s Alloa Pottery; material from the Alloa Glass work, probably the oldest glassworks in Europe still working on the same site; artefacts from Paton and Baldwin’s Kilncraigs wool-spinning mill and weaving looms related to the weaving industry of the Hillfoot towns and villages. There is also an expanding art collection, including works by the Alloa-born artist David Allan and 19th and 21st century Scottish artists.

The collection is not normally on display, but individual items may be viewed by by appointment. The Museum and Heritage Service also provides an outreach service, including lectures, visits, loans and reminiscence boxes on the Victorians, old toys, the Second World War and the Fifties and Sixties.

The Museum and Heritage Service can help you find out more about Clackmannanshire.

The county, with its dramatic landscape of flat carseland on the north bank of the River Forth and dominant Ochil Hills, has a rich cultural history.

There is archaeological evidence for prehistoric settlement, as well as some later occupation during the first millennium AD. Four impressive tower houses have survived atAlloa, Clackmannan, Castle Campbell in Dollar and Sauchie and, with Menstrie Castle, represent just a few of the great houses which once existed in the county.

They were built by the Bruces, Erskines, Campbells and Schaws, among the most distinguished families in medieval Scotland, who attended the Stewart kings at nearby Stirling Castle.

In the last three centuries the county has seen the rise and decline of many industries, including

• coal and silver mining,
• ship building and the use of Alloa as a port,
• brewing,
• distilling,
• pottery, brick and tile-making,
• and especially the textile industry with its many wool-spinning and weaving mills in Alloa, Clackmannan and the Hillfoots villages.